


All Fall Down

by wanderlustnostalgia



Series: Songfics [1]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Based on a My Chemical Romance Song, Depression, Desert Song, Drug Addiction, Existential Angst, Extended Metaphors, Figurative Language, Gen, Hospitals, Inspired by Music, Introspection, Overdosing, POV Second Person, Personification, References to Depression, Sad Ending, Song Lyrics, Songfic, Suicidal Thoughts, this is really emo sorry dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-19 01:20:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11302794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustnostalgia/pseuds/wanderlustnostalgia
Summary: You like to think of people as having two sides—the one that fights and the one that hopes.





	All Fall Down

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this like two years ago and forgot about it for awhile and then I found it again and I actually kind of like it?
> 
> I don't own any of the lyrics to "Desert Song", but everything else is mine :)

**_We hold in our hearts the sword and the faith._ **

You like to think of people as having two sides—the one that fights and the one that hopes.

Everyone carries a sword.  Some kids deal physically, taking their anger out on anything and anyone who happens to fall in their way.  Others bottle it in until they get home, where they unleash their weaponry on hapless pieces of paper, their words immortalized for all eternity.

You relate to those kids more than the others.

The truth is, no matter which way you use your sword, you are all using it for the same reason—to get back at the world.  To fight it.  To show the world that it doesn’t own you, that you are stronger, that you are better, that you will survive.

_For some kids, the only way to fight is to die._

It’s the ultimate endgame:  show the world it doesn’t control you by taking charge of your own mortality.

You’ve never been that melodramatic.

**_We carry on through cartilage and fluid._ **

We’ve become so occupied with fighting the world that we almost forget about that other thing our heart holds dear—our faith.

_Poor, misguided faith._

Faith is the child who cries herself to sleep at night, who falls to her knees praying for somebody, anybody to hear her pain, to soothe it, to make it better.  Faith believes the lies people say about her, begs the world to make it stop, who follows aimlessly and does nothing to stop the torture, refuses to take matters into her own hands.

Faith loves the world.

Faith believes that no matter how bad things get, no matter how hard it becomes, the world will show its compassion and open its arms to her and love her unconditionally and give her everything she’s ever wanted if she just holds on and waits and endures its tumultuous abuse without resisting because deep down inside, there is still a small part of her that sees the world for how it first appeared—a place of magic, of wonder, of beauty.

Faith lives in a permanent state of denial.

Every once in a while, faith shows herself, often in the most inconvenient of moments—when you’re writing a paper, staging a rebellion, screaming heavy metal from the top of your lungs in the shower to drown out the voices in your head, driving your car full speed down an empty highway.  Faith is the little voice that makes you stop and think, yes, the world screws us over, but…it’s also responsible for our existence.  Without the world, we wouldn’t be here.

(Then you pound your fist against the dashboard, cursing your dependency on a sociopathic, abusive world that knocks you down, pounds you mercilessly, only to remind you how crucial it is for your survival.

And then you move on.)

**_We’ll lie another day._ **

Sometimes you’re not sure which is the greater deception:  that the world is heartless and unforgiving, or benevolent and loving.  Faith may look beyond the cruelty and the darkness, but the sword forces us to ignore those specks of light and wonder the world has to offer.  Few people have ever stopped to consider that maybe—just maybe—they can coexist.  Most of us just continue fighting, or hoping, figuring that all will work out in the end.

The lie continues.

Oftentimes you find yourself lying awake in bed, wondering if any of it is worth it.  You’ve lost count of how many nights you’ve spent staring up at the ceiling, waiting for sleep that never comes, wondering whether the darkness you’d gladly welcome will actually arrive, or if the world is taunting you with promises of peaceful rest you will never enter.

The sun sets, the hours tick by.  Your brain never shuts down.

**_Tonight—will it ever come?_ **

 

A few years back, your friends found you passed out on your bathroom floor, blood on your arms and face, a broken bottle by your hand.  Someone—your brother, probably—propped you up against the cabinet and bandaged your bleeding knuckles, your open cuts.  At one point or another you came to, looked up at the two others, who were just standing there numbly, and asked, slurring, _Did you assholes come to stare or clean the blood off my floor?_

So the three of them took you to the hospital, and the next time you woke, you didn’t remember any of it.

_Such is the price of fighting._

 

Long ago, when you were young, lost and confused, that was when the fighting got rough and the world showed you its worst.  Exhausted, bruised and broken, you were ready to throw everything to the wind and surrender.  Let the world have this one if it meant the end of your pain.

Then you found the drugs—or rather, the drugs found you.

And the drugs—oh, the drugs were enticing, luring you in with promises of longevity and strength, irresistible highs to keep you going, keep you fighting, and, eventually, help you vanquish the world once and for all.  And they would do all this, graciously and gladly, if you handed over your soul.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now you’ve got blackened lungs and dead eyes and a body almost too frail to stand on its own, and somewhere, some part of you wishes you hadn’t made the deal all those years ago, that you’d simply given up when you had the chance, but that part of you is muffled by the loudness of the drugs and the voices that yell, _Keep fighting keep smoking keep shooting keep drinking more more moremoremoremoremoremoremore_.

Apparently, nobody told you that longevity does not equal strength.

**_Did we all fall down?_ **

You ask yourself this question every day—sitting in meetings with your manager, walking to venues in the rain, doing pointless interviews with pointless people.  At what point did we all decide to waste our lives fighting such a senseless battle, one we all lose in the end, and know we will lose in the end?

Sometimes you want to quit.

_The drugs, though—they don’t let you quit._

You made a deal with the drugs, and the drugs—they take their deals very seriously.  The drugs made a promise to keep you going, to make you keep going, and there’s no way in hell they’re letting you back out.  You gave them the keys to your soul.  You gave them control.  You are part of them.  They are part of you.

_Quitters never win._

So you continue fighting, screaming words to crowded arenas, wondering if anyone will actually hear you through the dark void, or if your voice is just disintegrating into nothingness.

**_From the lights to the pavement._ **

The first time you fell, they made a spectacle of it.  You were tired and coming off a massive hangover and your body decided, _hey, wouldn’t it be nice if we could close our eyes and fall over right here?_

And you did—right in the middle of the fucking sidewalk.

There was probably a two-second gap between when you fell and your friends rushed over to get you, but in your head it feels like an eternity.  You remember having your face pressed up against the gravel and the sun burning your face and blinding your eyes and your head pounding like the Fourth of July and _fuck,_ when did everything get so white _is that fucking blood on my face?_

You could barely stand, so they picked you up and dragged you into the car, and of course some dickhead got the whole thing on video and it was all over the tabloids by morning.  And then for the next few weeks, people laughed at you from behind their computers, onscreen, even on the street when you were getting your early-morning post-hangover coffee.  The band defended you to the end, but you spent many sleepless nights crying into your pillow, drinking till you felt numb, and vomiting it all back up because you couldn’t take it anymore.

That was when you stopped talking to people.

What you didn’t understand, and still don’t understand, is how so many people can delight in another’s misfortune.  _Schadenfreude,_ they call it.  Deriving pleasure from misery.  _But why?_   You’re no different from any of them—just a tormented figure pushing back against the world.  Do they really believe that bringing people down will advance their cause?  Does it give them more ammunition for their fight against the world?  Or is their faith so twisted and disfigured from years of abuse that it really thinks the world will reward them for furthering its destructive agenda?

You ponder this in your bed sometimes, along with all the other dark, existential thoughts.  Sometimes they burrow into your brain and travel through neural pathways down your spine into your throat and escape as a choked sob and you almost, _almost_ cry.  But the drugs hold you back, remind you that crying is a sign of hopelessness and hiss at you to keep fighting.

You take a deep breath.  And you shut down.

**_From the van to the floor._ **

The second time you fell, you were drunk—but then, when are you not?

They picked you up outside your house, and there you were, greasy hair and dirty clothes and slurred words and all, stumbling out of your house with a drink in one hand and the other gesturing wildly, and they almost didn’t take you, almost shoved you back inside and left without you while you sobered up, but the drugs—the drugs couldn’t have any of that.  So you pushed and kicked and protested to the best of your inebriated ability, until you tripped and fell down the steps in front of your house.

They checked to see if you were okay, if you’d been damaged any further by the incident, but you continued loudly cussing them out and generally being a public nuisance, so they pulled you down the front walkway and threw you into the backseat of the van and hopefully, _hopefully_ you would sober up.

There was probably some tension in the van.  You probably insulted your friends, and your brother, and your friends’ mothers, and there were probably tears, and probably some vomiting, and your brother probably having to explain over the phone that he was hauling a drunk lead singer and that _I’ll try to have him sober by the time we get there, but I’m not making any guarantees, yes sir, thank you sir._   But you don’t remember any of this, and your friends don’t talk about it—probably for your own good.

Still, you can’t help but imagine the hurt in their eyes, the frustration, the anger, as you carelessly spouted profanities and slurs that never would have left your mouth if you were sober, words that cut like knives, burned like flames.  If they could tell you what you did to them, you could take it all back—ameliorate the pain.  But they choose to suffer in silence, all because they love you too much to do otherwise.

 _All because they love you,_ the drugs say mockingly.  They don’t believe in love.

Your friends know it’s not your fault—well, not _entirely_ your fault.  The drugs—they pull strings.  Push buttons.  Make you do things and say things you’d never do or say sober.  When you’re sober, you choose your words deliberately, trying to give the right impression.  You have control.  The drugs have no such precision.  They force you to speak the truth, to tell the world exactly what you think of it, and not give any regard to what anyone else thinks.  And it’s freeing, but it’s also frustrating, to not have control over your own voice.

That’s the paradox of the drugs—they liberate and confine, all at once.

 

**_Spend the rest of your days rocking out just for the dead._ **

You drank too much.  You know it.  Your bandmates know it.  Even your fucking stage manager knows it, and that asshole’s spent the entire time yelling at everybody, including the underpaid part-time intern who’s just doing her best, goddamnit, and you’d call him on it if you weren’t so goddamn drunk.

All the while, you’re standing there backstage, breathing heavily.  The lights are too bright.  The room is too hot.  You wipe the sweat from your brow and end up smearing your eyeliner on account of lack of coordination.  There’s people shouting and running every which way and for a moment you stand there numbly, wondering _what the fuck is going on where the fuck am I what the fuck am I doing oh God oh God what the fuck—_

_“Are you okay, man?”_

_“You don’t look so hot.”_

_“Maybe you should sit this one out.”_

The faces are familiar but you can’t connect the names; the voices all blur into one and they’re all staring at you expectantly, looks of concern in their eyes as they wait for…something.  _What are they waiting for—?_

Oh.  They want you to say something.

 _Like what?_ The drugs snap.  _That you’re giving up?  Quitting?  You’re wasting time.  Every moment you spend backstage is a victory for the world.  You have to do this.  Get out there._

 _I’m fine,_ you say.

_“You’re drunk.”_

If you were sober, and one of your bandmates was drunk off his ass, you’d force him into the dressing room.  Hand him a bottle of water.  Make him sober up.  Play the rest of the show without him.  And if you were half as drunk as you are now, you would cancel the show.  Hand out refunds.  Give your body a rest for once.  But you’re not sober, and you’re not in control, and you’re also the frontman, the lifeblood, the heart and soul of this fucking band, and goddamn if you’re not going out there.

 _No,_ you say. _I’m fine._

_“But—”_

_“20 seconds to curtain.”_

Your brother looks at you with eyes like saucers.  Puppy-dog eyes, you think in your addled state.  But now is not the time for puppies.

 _“Please,”_ he says.

The drugs don’t care.  You don’t care.  You sing better drunk anyways.

_You’re going on._

The show starts and _fuck,_ this was a bad idea.  The crowd is too loud and the stage lights are too bright and there’s too much going on at once and your head, your head is spinning.  You barely manage to keep up with the rest of the band, your fingers fumbling on the guitar strings, your words erupting from your mouth in a barely coherent mess.

 _You shouldn’t be doing this,_ the sober part of your brain says.

 _Shut up,_ the drugs snarl.

_You’re embarrassing yourself—_

_SHUT UP._

You keep going.

Everything is shit.  The concert is shit.  Your band looks like shit.  You _feel_ like shit—you’re barely standing, gripping the mic stand for balance, your head is still spinning and _Jesus, when did it get so damn cold?_

Your bandmates shoot you a few concerned looks, but you wave them off.  The drugs urge you on.

At one point mid-song, your stomach lurches, and the sober part of your brain yells _run offstage, get to a bathroom, run run runrunrunrun_ —but you’re too disoriented to go anywhere, so you turn your head to the left, hunch over, and puke right where you’re standing.

The audience murmurs.  Your bandmates look horrified.  The sober part of your brain is mortified, but you keep playing, oblivious.

The set goes on.  You should be jumping around, screaming words for them to shout back at you.  You should feel electrified, feel the fire and the lightning coursing through your veins.  But where once ran passion and fever and electricity, now there is only empty air.  Your body’s growing weaker, and you know it.  You can feel it, feel the energy escaping your flesh, feel the drugs attempt to call them back, but to no avail.  Your eyes can barely stay open.  Your voice fades to a quiet, off-key mumble.  You sway carelessly, precariously for a little bit and puke some more, bile and vomit burning your throat and only taking more out of you.

The drugs are frantic.  _Keep fighting,_ they shout, _don’t stop, keep going, keep going,_ but your head aches and your body feels heavy and cold and you feel sick, sick to your stomach, sick in the head and you wish you were backstage, in the van, in bed, on the floor, anywhere but here.

The change is so subtle you barely notice it.  One minute the drugs are screaming at you to keep fighting, and the next their voices are drowned out, and the sober part of your brain is rationalizing.

 _The drugs promised to keep you fighting, but they neglected to mention just_ how _they keep you fighting._

You initially thought the drugs amplified your energy.  Gave you strength, gave you power, gave you life.  But what the drugs actually do, and what they never in a million years would tell you, is take all your energy and stretch it out over a longer period of time.  It’s true that they keep you fighting longer.  But they also strip you of your strength, your dignity, your energy—did you think drugs really made their own energy?  No, they’re just as dependent on you as you are on them, for without you they would have no power.

The drugs promised to keep you fighting, and they’ve kept you fighting.  But with no energy, and no willpower, you don’t get the honor of going out with a bang.  Your loss is a slow decline, a humiliating crawl towards the bitter end.

_Keep fighting—_

The drugs are back now, growing louder, and you could listen to them, you could fight, you could fumble your way through the concert and somehow live to see another day, but the sober part of your brain cuts in.  _Do you really want to sit around degenerating and inching your way to the end?_

_Keep fighting—_

_Or do you want to end the fight with the last shred of dignity you have left?_

You sway a little more.  By now you’ve stopped singing and are simply muttering nonsense words, eyes unfocused and unseeing.

The drugs keep screaming.

_Keep fighting—_

Your fingers loosen their grip on the microphone.  Your hands drop to your sides.

The crowd goes silent.

_Keep fighting—_

Your eyes slip closed.  You let out a single, shuddering breath.

_Keep fighting—_

_Keep fighting—_

Opening your eyes one final time, you give one last look at the light.

_I don’t want to fight anymore._

Your eyes close again and you fall to the floor.

_Welcome to the end._

The human spirit is tethered to the body by a series of strings, each one attached to some significant feature that is necessary for living.  When the body dies, the strings snap, one by one, until the spirit breaks free of the body and drifts away, leaving its old earthly shell to decompose and rot into nothingness.

You feel the first snap as you collapse.  The crowd gasps, and in one bizarre motion, your consciousness escapes your head and emerges, gasping for air.  Panting, you blink a few times and struggle to reorient yourself.  Your head is surprisingly clear.  The drugs no longer scream in your ears.  Your mind—what’s left of it, anyways—is sober.  Curiously, you look out into the crowd.  A fog seems to have washed over the background, and after squinting and trying in vain to make out shapes, you conclude that this new, limited vision is a direct result of your separation.

Your eyes flicker downwards to your body—what was once your body—crumpled on the floor.  A wave of realization hits you and you jerk back, understanding that you have seen your own self for the first time, not in photographs or reflections, but in the flesh, as others have seen you, as they now see you.  Hollow.  Skeletal.  Fragile.  No wonder they worry about you.

You feel tension limiting your movement and can’t back away any further.  And then you notice the strings.

They’re wispy things, the strings.  Thin, silken strands, delicate in appearance, but surprisingly powerful, especially in numbers.  You notice that they start to separate toward the middle, broken tendrils curling around the outside.  In their attempt to gain more energy, the drugs have gnawed away at the strings, eating at them from the middle where the good stuff is, and leaving you to suffer a slow decay, rather than the sudden snap.  With your surrender, one of your strings finally gave way, and freed your thoughts from your head.

You’re disconnecting.  And once you begin the disconnection, you can’t turn back.

 

**_From backstage to the doctor._ **

They rush you backstage, slap you, scream at you, try everything to wake you up, and it hurts, it hurts like hell, because despite your mind’s recent untethering, you can still feel sensations of pain.  You struggle a bit against the strings and manage to sever a few of the sensory connections.  The commotion and noises in the background fade, and it’s almost like you’re underwater.  It’s surreal.

The ambulance comes, and they’ve got you on a stretcher and there’s a mask on your face and your body’s still fighting, struggling vainly for air.  Your brother squeezes your hand, tears streaming down his cheeks, yelling something about how _“you can’t give up, not now”_ and _“please don’t do this to us, please, please—”_

Yeah, well.  It’s a bit late for that.

You feel a tingling sensation, but you have no tear ducts, no means from which tears can escape, and so you cannot adequately express your emotion.  You will miss him.  You might even come back for him, someday.  But now you focus on the task at hand.

 _Break,_ you command the strings, pulling with all your might and hoping, _praying_ for the bonds to give way.  But it’s difficult, because the next thing you know you’re in the hospital and there’s doctors everywhere, muffled voices overlapping and addressing each other and one of them, probably the leader, shines a light in your lifeless eyes.  The brightness makes you cringe and, reflexively, you yank.  Another string breaks.  The pain dissipates.

This victory is short-lived, for the doctors have begun to work on you, poking and prodding with cold hands.  They remind you of the drugs—their job is to save you, to keep you going, to keep you fighting, to hold on to those precious connections that are left—but you don’t want to keep going.

You fight the strings.

Your lungs are the next to go, the rise and fall of your chest slowing, shuddering, then coming to a halt.  For a moment, you feel the sensation of air leaving your body and gasp.  And then it ends.

The doctors notice your breathing fail.  Off goes the mask, in goes the tube, as they try to force air back into your lungs, to keep your heart beating.  But you keep fighting.  You will not let them save your life.  They will not make you go back.  You will not go back.

Every connection severed brings you closer and you can feel yourself hovering, floating, anchored only by a few sad strings.  You tug a little more and the weakest ones come loose.  You fade closer into nonexistence.

The last, and strongest connection, is to the heart.  Your heart is stubborn—it’s always been stubborn.  All hearts are stubborn; yours is more stubborn than most.  And now it clings desperately to its final string, in a show of blind, frenzied faith, trying, pleading with you not to let go, that things will get better, that you will survive.

You pull.  Your heart resists.

The monitor flashes and shows a frenetic display of zigzags, a woefully misinterpreted representation of your struggle.  The doctors hook up the machines, exchange glances, and charge.

_Clear._

The shock flings you back, repelled by the electricity of your heart.  _Stay back,_ it warns.

You refuse, and pull harder.

_Clear._

Again the shock repels you, but each burst of energy only fuels your resolve.  Your heart continues to struggle.

_Clear._

The electricity in your heart leaches into the bonds and eats away at the strings.  Your heart’s connection starts to crumble and dissolve.

_Getting closer…_

_Clear._

The final shock snaps the bond in two and sends both you and your heart flying backwards, untethered, unbound, disconnected.

_Free._

The line on the monitor goes flat.  The doctors start compressions.

But the strings are broken.  The deed is done.

**_From the Earth to the morgue._ **

You and your body are no longer one.  You are no longer a human being.

You simply…are.

And it is here, existing, that you finally find peace.


End file.
